Great Companies Inspire Great Performances
Foosball tables, Keurig coffee makers, big-screen TVs, Beer Fridays, birthday bonuses—creative employers can come up with about a jillion ways, large and small, to demonstrate concern for the worker.
Each one of those trappings, however, is just a tool. And you don’t build a productive workshop by simply dumping tools into it willy-nilly; you do it with a strategic focus that blends such factors as your approach to structuring an employee benefits plan, the way your workplace is set up, the way your work flow is organized to optimize each individual’s chance to succeed, or the processes you have for hiring people who will produce lift rather than drag.
Such thinking defines our 2014 Best Companies to Work For. As you read about this year’s winning companies and finalists, you’ll see the kinds of creative approaches that owners and executives have embraced to differentiate themselves in the quest to attract and retain the top talent.
As the economy continues to become ever more digitally driven and knowledge-based, attraction and retention of the best remains paramount. The work force has been shrinking in recent years relative to the overall population, and there are legitimate concerns about the quality of what’s left of it. For, as the late George Carlin so eloquently put it, half the people in the country, by default, are below average.
So here’s to the companies that place a premium on bringing in the truly talented worker, and helping him or her achieve personal goals in life and professional goals at work, while helping their organizations thrive.
